Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah Megillah (it’s still pronounced “Controversial” – I just think I’m being clever). Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.
I. Mordechai the Jew
One of the biggest problems we face when reading the megillah is that our deep familiarity with its story combines with our general lack of knowledge regarding the rest of Tanakh to numb us to some of the megillah’s more powerful messages.
Take the megillah’s introduction of Mordechai as an ’ish Yehudi, “a Jew” (Est. 2:5), a description that doesn’t strike us in any way as remarkable – we just think it’s just telling us that he’s a Jew. But why must we be told this? While the simple answer would be that, as unnecessary as it seems, Mordechai’s ethnic Jewishness is meaningful in Persia and will motivate Haman’s hatred (something I wrote about last week), there’s far more going on here.
It starts with recognizing that for all we translate ’ish Yehudi as “a Jew,” Tanakh never refers to the Jewish people using this word. The Hebrew term for “Jewish people” is Benei Yisrael, literally “the children of Israel” – so if the megillah simply wanted us to know that Mordechai was Jewish he’d be described as an ’ish Yisrael.1
And there’s something else that Yehudi cannot mean: from the tribe of Judah. Because the megillah explicitly tells us that Mordechai is an ’ish Yemini, from the tribe of Benjamin.2 Given this, the reference to him being a Yehudi must not refer to either his tribal identity nor simply his ethnic identity. Which leads us to a surprisingly important question: Is anyone else in Tanakh ever described as a Yehudi?
Here, there is an emphatic answer … maybe?
Because if you were to search for all instances in Tanakh where the word Yehudi appears, you’d find that the Book of Jeremiah mentions a Yehudi (ch. 36) – but my intentional non-italicization of Jeremiah’s Yehudi is because it’s just the person’s name, it’s not their title.
But there is only one other ’ish Yehudi, though here it never describes a specific person but rather an ideal – most powerfully expressed by the prophet Zechariah:
Thus said the LORD of Hosts: In those days, ten men from nations of every tongue will take hold – they will take hold of every ’ish Yehudi by a corner of his cloak and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zech. 8:23)
Zechariah prophesies a time when other nations will also want to go to the Land of Israel and will find their way there by following every ’ish Yehudi, every Jew. Here, then, the implication is that an ’ish Yehudi is someone who is on their way to the Land of Israel following redemption.
And if you wanted an obviously anachronistic way to frame the ’ish Yehudi in Zechariah to help grasp the concept, then “Zionist” would be perfect because the ’ish Yehudi is someone who has seen God’s Hand revealed in history and is thus returning to build up and live in the Land of Israel. Indeed, Ezra and Neḥemiah use the term Yehudi to refer to the members of their newly planted community who have returned to Israel.
Hence Zechariah’s prophecy following the Persian conquest of Babylon and the opportunity for Jews to return to the Land of Israel. Because famously – and tragically – the vast majority of the Jewish community preferred to stay in Persia, with only 42,360 Jews returning with Ezra (Ezra 2:64). Zechariah’s prophecy was, for want of a better expression, political: he was protesting the rather tepid return to the Land of Israel by stressing that to be an ’ish Yehudi, to be a “true Jew,” as it were, is to be someone who returns to the Land of Israel.
But with this context in mind, the megillah’s description of Mordechai as an ’ish Yehudi is all the more striking.
II. Mordechai the Persian
With the political context of the term ’ish Yehudi in mind, the megillah’s choice to characterize Mordechai as an ’ish Yehudi is already obviously jarring for the simple fact that he is very much not living in the Land of Israel.
And while there is a famous train of thought throughout many commentaries to Esther that the Mordechai of the megillah is synonymous with a person named Mordechai Bilshan who was one of the returnees to the Land of Israel with Ezra (Ezra 2:2),3 the simplest reading of the story is that, despite the opportunity to return to the Land of Israel, Mordechai stayed in Shushan.
And Mordechai’s desire to stay in Shushan is reinforced by two other pieces of information the megillah tells us about him. The first is, well, his name. I may have already mentioned this before – because it’s one of my favorite things to point out – but Mordechai is very much not a Jewish name.
And, in truth, this is not only also true of Esther but in her case, it’s actually recognized by the gemara. Because the megillah tells us that she has two names: “[Mordechai] was foster father to Hadassah, that is Esther” (Est. 2:7). And while Hadassah is as Jewish a name as you could come up with, Esther is taken from Ishtar, the Persian moon-goddess (cf. Megillah 13a).
But in Mordechai’s case, however, he only has one name – and while we associate Mordechai as a Jewish name, it comes from the name “Marduk,” who was the chief god of the Persian pantheon.4
And Mordechai’s super-Persian name is amplified by his super-Persian job, with the megillah constantly telling us that he is yoshev be-sha‘ar ha-melekh. Unfortunately, this is often literally translated as “sitting at the king’s gate” and conjures images of him being a vagrant. But this translation doesn’t gel well with the sheer access Mordechai seems to have around the palace. Sure, his niece is the queen – but no one else knows that (Est. 2:10, 20) and many scenes depict everyone else as accepting Mordechai’s presence around the palace.
A better understanding emerges from the Book of Daniel, which tells us that Daniel is given a prominent political appointment in Babylon, where he is also sat bitra‘ malka, the Aramaic for “at the king’s gate” (Dan. 2:48–49). And if we combine this with the archeological discovery that the administrative wing of the Babylonian and Persian governments operated out of a complex located just inside the palace walls, a better understanding of the phrase “sitting at the king’s gate” emerges.
Much like someone five hundred years from now thinking that the “Civil Service” were just a group of people who went around being really polite to others where necessary, we read “sitting at the king’s gate” far too literally. It’s the title of someone who works within the governmental bureaucracy.5
All of which is to paint a very Persian picture of Mordechai. While undeniably religiously principled – as the episode with Haman reveals as I wrote about last week – Mordechai is the Persian Jew par excellence: he has a Persian name and a Persian job and lives in Great Neck and, not only does he have no intention of living in Israel (something reinforced by the fact that Mordechai stays in Shushan as second-in-command at the end of the story), but he’s fiercely loyal to the king – foiling an assassination plot (Est. 2:21–23).
Yet the megillah nonetheless stresses that this Persian Jew is the ultimate Yehudi – despite the obvious fact that he is anything but the kind of person idealized by Ezra, Neḥemiah, and Zechariah.
III. Mordechai the Persian Yehudi
In the introduction to his Ḥidushim on Tractate Megillah – that is, the volume of gemara as opposed to the Book of Esther itself – Ramban addresses why Purim, alone, has two different days on which it’s celebrated. His analysis is, for our purposes, unnecessary. But amidst his wider thesis, he makes an observation that is rarely considered.
If we think about the geography and context of the 127 provinces ruled by Aḥashverosh, Ramban realizes that there’s a specific group of people in a very specific land who are included in Haman’s invective regarding a scattered and dispersed people who don’t follow the king’s laws (Est. 3:8): the Jews in the Land of Israel. The very same Jews who went under Ezra and Neḥemiah – and were celebrated by Zechariah – now stand to be destroyed along with their brethren in the wider Persian empire.
And, what’s more, they’re completely powerless.
What saves them, in the end, is the very same thing that saves all the Jews: the actions of Esther and Mordechai – two super-Persian Jews who did not go back to the Land of Israel but stayed in Shushan. And while I didn’t really stress the fact that Esther is super-Persian above, I think it’s somewhat obvious because she’s the Queen of Persia – you don’t get much more Persian than that!
The Book of Esther, then, can be read as making as much of a “political” message as Zechariah was. Yes, the people who return to the Land of Israel are to be termed “true” Jews – the ’ish Yehudi. But there’s another model of “true” Jew: Mordechai ha-Yehudi. Because though he happily stayed in Persia, he was responsible for the political survival of the Jewish people in Israel, too – he was responsible for ensuring that those who had already moved back were able to defend themselves.
IV. The Book of Exile
There’s a chilling corollary to this. Imagine if Mordechai and Esther had gone with Ezra and Neḥemiah. While Mordechai’s own religious confidence is reassuring – “relief and deliverance to the Jews will come from another quarter” (Est. 4:14) – it introduces a layer of complexity into a seemingly simple story.
And there’s lots more that can be said about the megillah being a story addressing the challenges of being a Jew outside of the Land of Israel. It’s why it leans so heavily on not just the Book of Daniel, but also the story of Yosef – the first Jew to be exiled from the Land of Israel.6 Indeed, the megillah downright riffs off the story of Yosef.
Compare these two verses:
וַיְהִ֕י כְּדַבְּרָ֥הּ אֶל־יוֹסֵ֖ף י֣וֹם ׀ י֑וֹם וְלֹא־שָׁמַ֥ע אֵלֶ֛יהָ לִשְׁכַּ֥ב אֶצְלָ֖הּ לִהְי֥וֹת עִמָּֽהּ׃
And much as she coaxed Joseph day after day, he did would not listen to her request to lie beside her, to be with her. (Gen. 39:10)
וַיְהִ֗י כְּאׇמְרָ֤ם אֵלָיו֙ י֣וֹם וָי֔וֹם וְלֹ֥א שָׁמַ֖ע אֲלֵיהֶ֑ם וַיַּגִּ֣ידוּ לְהָמָ֗ן לִרְאוֹת֙ הֲיַֽעַמְדוּ֙ דִּבְרֵ֣י מׇרְדֳּכַ֔י כִּֽי־הִגִּ֥יד לָהֶ֖ם אֲשֶׁר־ה֥וּא יְהוּדִֽי׃
When they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s resolve would prevail; for he had explained to them that he was a Jew. (Es. 3:4)
Or these two:
כִּי־אֵיךְ֙ אֶֽעֱלֶ֣ה אֶל־אָבִ֔י וְהַנַּ֖עַר אֵינֶ֣נּוּ אִתִּ֑י פֶּ֚ן אֶרְאֶ֣ה בָרָ֔ע אֲשֶׁ֥ר יִמְצָ֖א אֶת־אָבִֽי׃
For how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me? Let me not be witness to the disaster that would befall my father! (Gen. 44:34)
כִּ֠י אֵיכָכָ֤ה אוּכַל֙ וְֽרָאִ֔יתִי בָּרָעָ֖ה אֲשֶׁר־יִמְצָ֣א אֶת־עַמִּ֑י וְאֵֽיכָכָ֤ה אוּכַל֙ וְֽרָאִ֔יתִי בְּאׇבְדַ֖ן מוֹלַדְתִּֽי׃
For how can I bear to witness the disaster which will befall my people! And how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred! (Est. 8:6)
To which there are many, many more examples.
And what the megillah thus addresses is the role of Jews living outside the Land of Israel. Because in the Purim story the Jews had the opportunity to live in their own land, yet they did not take that opportunity.
And while Zechariah, Ezra, and Neḥemiah were outraged by that, the Book of Esther offers an alternative framing. That it is necessary for there to be Jews living outside of Israel who contribute to the political survival of those in the Land of Israel.
And it stresses this with the simplest of devices: by drawing attention to the seemingly obvious fact that Mordechai is a Jew.
It’s possible that Yehudi was how the Persians referred to Jews and the megillah is aping that language.
Ḥazal famously resolve this by suggesting that Mordechai is the child of parents from both tribes (Megillah 12b). Alternatively, it is possible that Yehudi simply means any resident of the Kingdom of Judah (see, for example, Jer. 40:11–12).
Indeed, there are those who read “Mordechai Bilshan” in Ezra 2:2 as describing two different people, our Mordechai and another person called Bilshan. Additionally, the idea that Mordechai is Mordechai Bilshan is the source for one of the best-known midrashim about Mordechai, that he spoke seventy languages: Bilshan can also be read as be-lashon, which effectively turns the name into a description, “Mordechai the speaker of many languages.”
This leads to my favorite line about myself, that there’s not much point in me switching to my Hebrew name because while my English name is Mark – either the Roman god of war or an Apostle – my Hebrew name is the chief god of Persia. So, it’s very much six of one and half a dozen of another.
This fact, combined with the story of Mordechai foiling an assassination attempt on the king and the aforementioned midrash about his linguistic capabilities leads to the somewhat popular and fanciful idea that he worked for the Persian equivalent of the FBI.
The megillah also borrowed one of the tropes of the Yosef story: God is very much behind the scenes, going completely unmentioned in the story’s opening acts.